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Saturday, June 15, 2013

Googlegate…oh, what a tangled web – part three

By Irene F. Starkehaus -

Conservatives as a voting bloc have yet to figure out how to reconcile the values that a candidate declares on the stump to what his intentions are once he gets swept into office on a conservative platform. Let us be clear. Reagan's words have been pilfered by the RINOs on multiple occasions for the sole purpose of gaining power when they have no intention of following through on their election promises. ~part two

Conservatives recognize the challenges that we are facing politically, but still fail to produce a meaningful plan for energizing people to vote for our preferred solutions to the troubles our nation faces. We are guilty of the worst kind of crisis resolution when it comes to facing down the growth big government. We long for solutions, but our go-to strategy for breaking the Left's stranglehold is to unearth the outmoded bones of compromise that were fashioned for resolving conflict with people who don't view the US Constitution as an obstacle. We expect that our concessions with progressivism will produce happily-ever-afters and kinship with the opposition party and we are stunned when this strategy doesn't work.

A great example of this is Marco Rubio – rising star of the conservative coalition…rarely do we find such a person who is capable of so articulating conservative values, but he doesn't want to be accused of heartlessness when it comes to dealing with illegal immigration so what is his solution? Give Dems everything that they want and hope they will reciprocate our good faith compromises? Good heavens, why would they? But his answer to that question is, "Trust me. I'm not going to do anything that will hurt America's future."

Classic Republican misstep. What an utter failure to follow Ronald Reagan's number one rule when dealing with progressivism: Trust but verify.

This begs the question…what has the GOP done for you as a conservative since the end of the Reagan era to prove any commitment to constitutional liberty and free market principles? What are they doing to push back the tide of socialist overreach? When Reagan and Gorbachev sat down to discuss nuclear disarmament, did Reagan listen to Gorbachev's promises that he would reduce Russia's nuclear stockpile and just accept his word? Should Republicans act differently than Reagan did when facing our own domestic Cold War?

Well, let's see. We had George Bush the Elder who ran for president on a conservative platform and broke his promise to the American people by betraying Reagan's legacy and raising taxes because he just didn't have any other choice in the matter. After all, the Democrats promised that they would compromise with him if he would just give them this one little agenda item. How did that work out for us or for him?

If your memory fails you because you're struggling with grotesque cigar and blue dress flash backs, I'll help remind you. This led us to eight years of one of the most depraved, narcissistic and corrupt presidencies that America has ever known and it laid the bureaucratic groundwork for every broken trust that America faces today...health care reform, the multiple banking crises, the War on Terror…the seeds for these and several other Leftist agenda items were sown during the Clinton presidency.

So that's what failing to trust but verify gave us as a start.

Let's do ourselves a favor and just brush past the Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney clusters because they couldn't even muster enough energy to pretend to be conservatives. While all three men brilliantly tore fellow Republicans to shreds, the moment they faced the opposition party they experienced a spectacular Cindy Brady - like brain freeze.

They had to dispatch and conservatives Jack Kemp, Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan (who were all politically damaged in the process) but not even these firebrands could put humpty back together again.

And that leaves us with George Bush the Younger. He proves once and for all that waltzing into office on the conservative platform and actually serving as a conservative are two different things. He sure talked a good conservative game but it wasn't long before Bush's progressive slip began to show, was it? Because of 9/11, Bush had no choice but to give us the Patriot Act. Conservatives softly bristled against that little nightmare but we were gently chided by the GOP leadership that what choice was there? We had to support Bush because he was our guy and our guy was dealing with a crisis of monumental proportions, right? How were we repaid for our appeasement?

Democrats speak truth when they point out that Republicans brought the current infringements on privacy upon themselves. The Patriot Act laid the groundwork for all the constitutional breaches with which Barack Obama has indulged himself and his band of merry henchmen, and he can rightly point to George Bush as the reason that he has the power to use the Patriot Act to his political advantage in the first place. George Bush swore that the administrative powers created under the Patriot Act would in no way be used by his Administration as a means for shadowing the everyday activities of American people and he was right. It wasn't that he lied. No one bothered to verify that no other president would be required to follow his lead.

As for Barack Obama, we have been assured and reassured that even though members of his administration used bureaucratic powers for political gains that have yet to be fully realized, you can trust that his administration would never use bureaucratic powers for political gains. Yes, take the time to read that sentence again if you need to. It still won't make any sense and yet that is exactly what Obama is telling the American people. The fact, for instance, that harassment by the IRS did happen and happened only to people who politically oppose Democrats should in no way be misconstrued as an abuse of executive powers. It was just happy coincidence…a coincidence that is so profoundly supernatural in its exactitude that it brings our nation one step closer to deifying Barack Obama as America's first Sun King.

And then there's No Child Left Behind. George Bush's segue into nationalized education. George Bush promised that NCLB would in no way inhibit the states in their decisions regarding curriculum and he was right. He promised that any information gathered by the Department of Education regarding student achievement would be generalized and not child specific. He didn't lie. It's just that no one verified that no future president would be able to put mechanisms in place for spying on your children.

Common Core…ho-lee-cow. If you thought IRS-gate or Googlegate were threats to your privacy, just wait to see how helplessly you will rage against the machine when you realize how much personal information will be gathered on your daughters and sons. In spite of the thundering tempests over lost privacy via unchecked executive powers and the Administration's misuse of our technology sectors, we are about to charge full steam ahead and implement Common Core standards throughout the land.

Put aside the very real concerns over whether Common Core truly improves standards in education as Common Core advocates claim. This program's raison d'etre is the standardization of curriculum content and the usurpation of states' rights by the federal government by centralizing authority over local school districts. As a nation, we are livid over the betrayal of Googlegate because providers such as Google, Yahoo, AOL, and Bing have worked in conjunction with agencies such as the NSA to monitor your online activity because somewhere throughout the bazillions of exchanges of information, there might be one person who means to harm the American way of life more than comprehensive searches of personal information without a warrant could. And never mind that these providers, by and large, support the Democratic Party. Let's allow Bill and Melinda Gates and their international one-world views to involve themselves in Common Core and what your children will learn.

No-no. Even better. Let's use my money and your money to pay Bill Gates to involve himself in this overhaul so that he can gain even more wealth that he can funnel into one-world projects. It's like paying Iran to build nuclear facilities on a promise that they won't use them to make weapons. How's that for trust but verify?

A liberal overhaul of the Department of Education, but who is demanding that the GOP ignore Tea Party concerns over governmental overreach? Per Fox News:

Potential 2016 presidential candidate and former Florida Republican Gov. Jeb Bush has landed in the middle of the controversy. A champion of education reform, including support of home schooling and school vouchers, he has essentially asked lawmakers to resist the Tea Party pressure.

"The Common Cause State Standards are clear and straight forward," he told business leaders last month in Michigan. "Do not pull back. Please do not pull back from high, lofty standards."

Jeb Bush's endorsement…any member of the Bush family's endorsement of ObamaCore alone ought to have every conservative in the State of Illinois rallying in Springfield for the repeal of this heinous legislation. Where is his proof that this experiment in group think will improve education standards? How can he verify that the Democrats won't use this process to further indoctrinate our children with socialism? How can he guarantee that the DOE won't use child specific information to deny your daughters and sons services needed just because their parents vote for the GOP? Is that just crazy talk? Is that not what the IRS did with the tax code in denying Tea Party organizations their tax status? It's ridiculous that we have to watch this intrusion into individual privacy play out one more time. Republicans can do better than this folly and ought to be forced to at least try.

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Googlegate…oh, what a tangled web – part three

By Irene F. Starkehaus -

Conservatives as a voting bloc have yet to figure out how to reconcile the values that a candidate declares on the stump to what his intentions are once he gets swept into office on a conservative platform. Let us be clear. Reagan's words have been pilfered by the RINOs on multiple occasions for the sole purpose of gaining power when they have no intention of following through on their election promises. ~part two

Conservatives recognize the challenges that we are facing politically, but still fail to produce a meaningful plan for energizing people to vote for our preferred solutions to the troubles our nation faces. We are guilty of the worst kind of crisis resolution when it comes to facing down the growth big government. We long for solutions, but our go-to strategy for breaking the Left's stranglehold is to unearth the outmoded bones of compromise that were fashioned for resolving conflict with people who don't view the US Constitution as an obstacle. We expect that our concessions with progressivism will produce happily-ever-afters and kinship with the opposition party and we are stunned when this strategy doesn't work.

A great example of this is Marco Rubio – rising star of the conservative coalition…rarely do we find such a person who is capable of so articulating conservative values, but he doesn't want to be accused of heartlessness when it comes to dealing with illegal immigration so what is his solution? Give Dems everything that they want and hope they will reciprocate our good faith compromises? Good heavens, why would they? But his answer to that question is, "Trust me. I'm not going to do anything that will hurt America's future."